


Wheriko

by quintic



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 18:19:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18783601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quintic/pseuds/quintic
Summary: 1. (verb) to flash, glitter, sparkle, twinkle, gleam, glisten2. (verb) to be resplendent, impressive, brilliant, dazzling3. (verb) to glimpse, see dimly.





	Wheriko

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ashling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/gifts).



Of all the evenings you didn't actually want to go to a party, of course one is being thrown at your house with next to no warning. There's no time to make alternate plans. There isn't even a reason for it, your flatmate texts you during work and asks you to bring a couple of bags of chips home, maybe some dip? _For fuck's sake_ , you text them, but they send you a complex list of emojis back that you assume means they love and cherish you for all of the very important hunter-gatherer work that you do around here, so you decide to let it slide.

But that was at the start of your shift, when you still had more than an ounce of social energy left in the tank. By the time you're pulling off your work shirt and shrugging your way into a hoodie you're exhausted, sick of talking to people. You only remember about the chips-and-dip halfway home, and pull a uey out on the main drag in order to double back on the supermarket.

And now you're sitting in the corner of the party half-awake, can of cold, cheap beer clutched between calloused fingers. You're only up to be polite and you manage a good couple of conversations, bowling your way through all of the painful small talk, the revelation that you are, yes,  _still_ working at the paint shop and yeah, it's been two years now and that's still something that you're doing, good for you, good for you. It fucking sucks. You're thinking of moping on outside, maybe bumming a cigarette if you can, when you hear a shriek from the door and half of the party pulls around to face the other side of the room. 

Your flatmate is lifting somebody off the floor in her enthusiasm, the woman in her arms giggling, her head tipping to the side and- hey, wait a moment- 

It's Marama. You don't need to say her name, because a few more people have already spoken it in their haste to get up off of couches and get to her, crowding her appearance by the door. You didn't know that she was coming back today, you thought she would have mentioned that to you on Facebook, or something. You would have come to pick her up from the airport if she had only let you know. That's Marama though, always big on surprises, big on pranks. You're looking at her now and she's having a fantastic time, laughing at the bewildered, delighted expressions on everybody's faces. You're looking at her, you're... looking, at her face, her eyes crinkled at the corners, she's got some kind of sparkly eye-shadow on. You don't think you've ever seen her with make-up on before. It's so distracting, the glitter of her skin when she tips her head into the light that it takes you a moment to notice that she's cut her hair, that it frames the curve of her cheeks when it hangs short at her jaw.

"Maia! Get _over_ here!" 

She's looking at you now, her hands on her hips and you spill Speight's down your jeans in your haste to get up before she can bowl you over with one of her hugs. Her arms go out around you, strong and safe and she pulls you against her and you close your eyes and breathe in the smell of her, warm and familiar. Something hooks in your gut, warm. Foreboding. Uh oh. 

"Hello," she whispers, in your ear.

"Hi," you say, almost shy, feeling like you don't know her. She's still the same, she's still one of your best friends, but she's... different some how too, it's in the way that she carries herself. She leans back, and tucks a bit of your hair behind your ear. You feel so, so stupid for wearing whatever you could find on your bedroom floor to this, but she isn't looking at your band t-shirt with the rip in the collar, or the old flannel knotted around your waist, your baggy jeans with the holes in the knees. She's just looking at you. It's nice.

"When did you get back? You should have told me, I would-"

"The whole point of not telling anybody was to get to see the looks on your dumb faces when I rocked on up here unannounced."

"Dramatic as ever," you tell her dryly, and tug a lock of her fringe, "what the fuck is this all about?"

"Right? Total impulse thing, I wanted a change. It looks good, yeah?"

"Yeah. Nah, I mean- course it looks good."

Fuck, you're too tired for this. It's so good to see her, of course it is, but you're too munted after work or after the beer or _something_ because you can't stop admiring her. You haven't said anything else and neither has she, but then she yawns, sweet and warm in your face and you blink. 

"Got back literally three hours ago, to answer your question."

"And you still came here? Far out, I feel bad for complaining after coming here after my shift."

"You would complain about coming in even if you had been in bed all day right before the party started."

You shove her and she laughs, bright and loud. Other people are trying to crowd around to talk to her and you give her leg a pat and you let her attention be diverted. You gotta get up, gotta go take this jumble of feeling elsewhere. Into the kitchen, so you can get a glass of water. You drink out of a mug with a strawberry pattern, and then you tip a bit of pink wine in there and you take it back to her, pass it over the coffee table and into the conversation she's having with another one of your friends. She takes it and clinks it against your knuckles in gratitude. You pause by the door-frame on your way back and watch her mouth press against the chipped ceramic right where yours had been only moments before. 

Uh oh. God. What is _with_ this, you are not supposed to be wigging out over Marama like this. You've been friends for years and you've always loved her, in that way that it's impossible not to. She's loud and annoying and hooks arms when you walk, makes you slow down to match her pace. She has this thing about tiles on pavements, she always has to shape her feet to the length and width of them so she doesn't step on any cracks. You talk on the phone after work sometimes but not always, and then she went overseas for two years and you stopped talking out loud and started messaging all the time instead. The timezone thing made it annoying but kind of nice, cuz you'd wake up in the morning and she would have blown your phone up with texts overnight.

And now she's back, she's sitting in your flat with her new hair-cut and her glittery make-up, leaving a pink lip print on the side of your strawberry mug. Your stomach twists. You turn and find the door out onto the deck and go huddle out there for a moment, smoking and staring at your phone and scrolling through your conversation history. She'd actually gone silent for a few days. You'd assumed she'd been doing work stuff, you hadn't bothered her. You'd sent her a picture of a cat tucked up in bed with the duvet tucked in under its little chin like a person, its eyes closed, asleep. She'd left that on seen. 

"Oh, that looks so good right now." 

You didn't even hear the door open. 

"Huh?" You say stupidly, and pass her your cigarette. She knocks the ash off the end, but doesn't lift it to her lips.

" _That_ ," she says, and points at your phone, at the little picture of the cat in bed. "I wish that were me. Everybody wants to talk and ask me questions about the trip but I'm too tired."

"I'm sorry you're so popular."

She hums, and sits down next to you, pressing in close as she takes a drag. She twists her head to the side, blows the smoke out of the corner of her mouth. You don't need to look at her to know what she's doing, two years isn't long enough to erase that kind of information. She hooks her foot around your ankle. 

"You okay?"

You do look at her, then. She's squinting at you in the dark.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"You're acting all weird." 

You grunt. Good to know that it's obvious. "I'm just... uh really surprised that you're back. I thought it was going to be a few more months."

"Yeah, but aren't you  _happy_? What are you sulking all alone out here for?"

"I'm just letting other people talk to you," you fire back, embarrassed and irritated with yourself, "I talked to you, like, four days ago, I can wait another couple hours."

She sighs, and you look at the smoldering cigarette in the dark, watching the little embers at the end flicker and die. Your stomach feels like a pile of snakes. You probably need to go to bed too, let this get some sleep. You'll feel different in the morning, it'll... go away. 

It's not that you don't want to like Marama, it's more that you had your chance. You tried the dating thing and you weren't really into it and she wanted too much. You talked about it for hours and she cried and it made you feel so fucking awful, like you were the worst person alive, but you couldn't be anything other than truthful. Not to her. That was ages ago, so long that you don't remember how many years, and for the whole thing to come rearing back up again _now_ , like this? It feels like part of Marama's stupid joke, like she brought it home from the airport with her and floated it through the room and into your brain and you fell for it, hook line and sinker.

"Hello," she's saying, and knocking on your head with her knuckles while you're thinking about all of this, "Earth to Maia. You in there? What's with you tonight?"

You make yourself say the words she wants to hear. "Do you want to crash here?"

" _Yes_ ," she says fervently, and stubs your cigarette out on the ground, grinding the toe of her boot over it and dusting her hands off on her pants. Glances at her bare wrist. "What time is it?"

"Half midnight."

"Do you think I can call it now?"

"Marama you literally flew half-way across the world three hours ago? If somebody tries to stop you from going to bed now, I'll kick their ass."

"Aww," she says, and dimples, and you laugh, standing before she can. You've got a sudden desire to make sure there's nothing too embarrassing on the floor of your room, despite knowing it would be nothing she hasn't seen a million times before.

You beat her there because somebody else is leaving and wants to grab her before they go. You scoop up armfuls of clothes and throw them up onto your loft, tuck work shirts underneath of the bed, arrange all of your pillows up on the bed instead of leaving them lying on the floor. Marama, predictably, doesn't notice any of this effort as she staggers into your room and drops her tiny bag at the foot of your bed. She just collapses onto the mattress and doesn't move. 

"That bad, huh."

"I didn't sleep at all on the flight. You know how it's always so cold in there? The recycled air dried out the insides of my nostrils, it hurt to breathe in."

Her voice is muffled, she's still face-down in the pillows. You throw a t-shirt onto her back unceremoniously, and she rolls over with a huff.

"Can I borrow your toothbrush?"

"No."

" _Please_ ," she wheedles, sitting up, pulling her dress off over her head. Your eyes dart away like you're a little kid, embarrassed to be in the same room as somebody else while changing. You turn to face your wardrobe, and undo your jeans.

"No!"

"You're the one that has to suffer my morning breath, it's in  _your_ best interests to let me use it."

The thought of her in the morning with her hair bunched around her face, her expression soft and sleepy, sparks a hot jolt of energy in the pit of your stomach. When you turn around she's wearing your shirt, her thighs bare. This has happened a million times before, you've seen her scoot across to the wall a million times before and tuck two pillows underneath of her head. You've seen her pat the spot beside her in the bed a million times before. This is the first time you've been afraid to get underneath of the covers with her. What if she hears your traitor heart thudding in the night, loud and insistent, caged in your ribs? 

Your mouth is so, so dry. "I won't brush them either, then we'll be even." 

"That is the worst compromise of all time."

She's got her eyes closed, so she doesn't see the way you sink a knee reverently onto the mattress and ease yourself down beside her. She hasn't taken off her make-up. You get into bed and pull the covers up and tuck them underneath of the chin. She's as peaceful as that cat, now. You're so close you can count the little individual specks of glitter on her eyelids, and fluster when she opens them and looks at you. 

You're waiting for her to say something, to expose you, but she just looks at you for a long, even moment. Like she's assessing something. 

"What," you whisper. You want to cry. Your eyes feel so hot at the corners, you have no idea what is happening. You're not supposed to feel like this. 

"Nothing," she says, after a beat, and she finds your hand underneath of the covers. She links your fingers together, and her thumb swipes across your knuckles, gentle, forgiving. It feels like she's giving you permission, in some weird way. And after a beat, she does inch a little closer and you do too, and you give her a soft, gentle kiss, right on her lip. 

"... I missed you."

"I missed you too." 

You blink, and a tear snakes its way down the side of your nose. She takes her hand back and wipes it away with her thumb, and then she puts that to her mouth and she tastes it. You have no idea if she did it on purpose or just on autopilot, but the intimacy of the whole moment makes a shiver wash over you, right up your spine. 

"Can we talk about it tomorrow? I want to go through the whole thing now but I can't, I'm-"

"Yeah, I know." You've got a lump in your throat that could be your heart. You swallow it back down, and close your eyes. "Yeah, we can talk about it tomorrow."

"Okay."

You know you're going to wake up with glitter on you, but you can't bring yourself to care about that right now. Maybe tomorrow. 

**Author's Note:**

> hello ashling! i hope you like this wee fill, i had a lot of fun writing it. i'm sorry that it's aggressively by a new zealander but i can't help it. i haven't written a lot of original fiction and i found it easier to write if i injected a little of my own experience into the story haha. have a good one


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